Bopanna-Matthew Ebden storm into final, defeat five-time Grand Slam champions

NEW YORK: Indian tennis player Rohan Bopanna and Australian partner Matthew Ebden stormed into the US Open 2023 men’s doubles final after beating Frenchmen Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert in straight sets in the semi-finals on Friday.

The sixth-seeded Indo-Australian duo won the tennis match 7-6(7-3), 6-2 in one hour and 34 minutes at the Louis Armstrong Stadium in New York. Mahut and Herbert are five-time Grand Slam champions.

“When we held after saving a break point to avoid going down a double break in the first set, that was really important. We got some great energy from the crowd. Back in the final 13 years later for me, so I’m very happy," Bopanna said as quoted by Olympics.com.

Bopanna will be contesting his career’s second Grand Slam final, both incidentally at the hard court major. He had reached the men’s doubles final of the 2010 US Open with Pakistan’s Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi, which the duo lost to the Bryan brothers. A 2017 French Open mixed doubles champion, Bopanna is yet to win a major men's doubles title. At 43 years and six months, Bopanna also became the oldest player to reach a Grand Slam final in the Open era.

He beat the record of Canada’s Daniel Nestor, who was 43 years and four months old when he played in a major final at the 2016 Australian Open. In the US Open 2023 men's doubles final on Friday, Bopanna and Ebden will play third seeds Rajeev Ram of the USA and Joe Salisbury of Great Britain at the Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Ram and Salisbury are two-time US Open men’s doubles defending champions. So far this year, Bopanna and Ebden have won two titles – the Qatar Open in February and the Indian Wells in March.

The duo also made the Wimbledon semi-finals in July. At the Indian Wells, Rohan Bopanna became the oldest tennis player to win the ATP Masters 1000 title.